Thanks to the success of Bryan Singer’s X-Men and Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man, virtually every recognizable comic book property was plunged into active development and brought to the screen as quickly as possible to capitalize on the boom, with Ang Lee’s Hulk just one of many to fall by the wayside.
A sequel was tentatively planned for a May 2005 release before the opener had even made its way to theaters, only for an underwhelming box office haul of $245 million to end any hopes of a franchise. A 62 percent Rotten Tomatoes score is admittedly decent, but a 29 percent user rating on the aggregation site most definitely is not.
An arthouse think-piece plagued by daddy issues wrapped in the clothes of a $137 million blockbuster, it was a unique experience, if not a successful one. Some of Hulk does hold up, though, with star Josh Lucas admitting to The Playlist that director Lee’s ambition ultimately hampered the film, in part due to the technology he desired not quite existing to an acceptable standard.
“If people ask me who my favorite directors are, I almost invariably will tell you my number one is Ang. I don’t use this word genius, but I think he’s truly up there as a, if not brilliant, genius filmmaker. Like you say, he was swinging for the rafters on. I don’t think the technology was quite where his brain was. And if you look at what he did with Life of Pi he was able to hit it out of the park.
I think the technology evolved, and he’s one of the people who pushed the technology to evolve. I know he was pushing the team of people who were on the CGI of Hulk to make something that, technically, maybe wasn’t capable of being at the level he wanted it yet. And so I think he was very frustrated with that movie by not being able to get what he wanted and what was in his brain. But I also agree with you, the way he was morphing, the way pages were flipping.
I mean, he was creating a visual comic book. And I haven’t seen anybody do it quite the same way he was doing it – think about it, that’s 20 years ago, right? So, there’s an incredible auteur filmmaker beneath this monster, an early Marvel movie. I have nothing but respect for it.”
Opinion on Hulk varies depending on who you ask, but Lucas’ assessment is fairly spot-on. The film was dated almost instantly as CGI continued rapidly evolving, but Lee’s warring sensibilities on the thematic and visual front ended up compromising his vision in the end.